Roots

by Anita Menon

“Does your child speak your mother tongue?” , a neighbour asked me in the lift today. Though I did not know her well, she thought it appropriate to enter into my personal space and ask me this question. I shrugged and replied, irresponsibly, “Not really.” Then I paused to think and added, ” Actually no. She refuses to speak both my mother tongue that is Malayalam and my husband’s which is Hindi.” “Oh, that’s a shame.” , she replied and thankfully, in seconds which seemed like hours the lift hit the ground floor and we went our separate ways. I had half a mind to call her back and offer my side of the story. Some how I wasn’t prepared to take that responsibility and the guilt of raising a child who didn’t speak any of the mother tongues. I wanted to pass the blame on to my stubborn 4-year-old who pretends to not hear when we speak to her in any language other than English.

I had to pass on this guilt.

She ( the neighbour) couldn’t just walk away making me feel so small. Did her children know all her mother tongues? Wait a minute, I didn’t even know if she had children or for that matter she spoke any language other than English because that is the the language we used to converse. After all, what is her concern, if my daughter spoke in her mother tongue! I was surprised at the angst that I was feeling for these few seconds of dialogue exchanged in a lift. I was on my way to the gym and rest of the way I was occupied by this thought. At the gym, I asked my instructor if his son spoke Telgu ( he is from Hyderabad), to which he said ,”Only a few words”. His son was too young to speak but he said he will make sure that he spoke Telgu like he was born in Hyderabad. I was amazed at my training instructor’s passion. Did I feel such a passion towards my roots?

Off late, yes.

It is a recent phenomenon where I am drawn to everything that was remotely connected to Kerala – cuisine, travel destinations, movies, news, relatives and language. My parents are here and that itself increases my chances of speaking in Malayalam. We have been watching a lot of Malayalam movies these days and I am drawn to their simple yet ingenious plots. Clever film makers and insanely talented younger breed of actors have churned one excellent movie after the other. There cannot be a successful Hindi / Bollywood equivalent or even Hollywood. Translation would kill the spirit and remake would falsify the effort. I have learnt a whole new set of vocabulary through these movies and it feels like an achievement.

That my mother is around has also ensured that we eat a lot of Kerala cuisine. Vegetarian. I have been showcasing a lot of that food on my Instagram under the #ammasrecipes. Each time I have a meal, all my childhood memories come rushing back to me. Then I begin to wonder what memories will my child have about my signature food. Do I have any signature recipes like my mum does? All these questions and doubts worry me no end.

Having grown up in Gujarat, I had limited exposure to Kerala and its culture. All the cultural exposure was cramped into a month that I spent with my cousins and grand parents in the summer holidays. I felt like an outlier that you look at with contempt outside the bell curve. I couldn’t speak the language fluently. That I spoke and wrote Gujarati like it was my mother tongue did not matter. I was an outcast and that made me a rebel. I refused to learn the language or the cultural nuances, how ever hard my parents tried. I was comfortable being the outcast. I responded in English and that limited my interaction with everyone back in Kerala. This absolved me from a lot of responsibilities and I was happy being in my own company.

Fast forward 17 years and Mimi happened. There is something about having your own offspring that evokes a deep cultural sentiment inside. It wants you to get back to your roots and find your lost connections. It wants you to give that experience to your progeny so that they can find that connect early on and not struggle like you did, or feel lost like you did. For the longest time, as a student and later as a working professional, I felt lost. I felt no attachment to my Kerala heritage and Gujarat I had left long back. I still remember, in one of the client discussions in New Jersey, my American Manager asked me where I was from. I promptly answered, ‘ I feel global. I am a global citizen’. He laughed and that is how he referred to me during the rest of the time I was in NJ. Marrying a hubby from the North of India added more complexity to my identity. I was a Keralite, who felt like a Gujarati and now was married to a North Indian. A child born in such complexity will never have an easy time figuring out the ” belonging’ part. I empathize with her and hence never made any severe attempts to make her familiar with anything that would remotely cause clash of culture in her mind. She had to be kept out of it. That is why, I didn’t make special efforts to teach her my language or my husband’s even. I thought whenever she would hear us speaking she would learn automatically. Unfortunately, that did not happen and I didn’t force her.

But now as I grow older, I want to make more Malayalee friends so that I get the opportunity to speak the language and feel one with the community. Funnily, even now when I speak in Malayalam, it feels like a foreign language to me. But a foreign language that I feel very close to.

I feel like I want to ‘belong’. I don’t want to be an outcast anymore. I feel a deep sense of shame when I have to confess that I can’t read or write Malayalam. As I write this post, I am torn between exposing my daughter to the rich cultural heritage of Kerala, which I, myself am not too aware of and just letting her be. Should I just allow life to take its own course and not intervene? Is it too late or too early? Likewise, I leave the onus of introducing our daughter to the vibrant culture of the north to my husband.

These are complicated decisions. Complicated to my mind even now cause I was deeply affected by feeling like an outcast but later, I was comfortable in my outcast skin. Growing up, I cannot even imagine how my daughter would feel as she comes from two very different cultures and is now growing up in a completely different culture of Bahrain. A subset, within a subset within a subset! Only time will tell how easy or difficult it is going to be for her.

8 Comments to “Roots”

I think this is one of the biggest thing on conscious about roots.. I have a theroy that roots are where the heart is…
You had yours in gujarat even if yoi think it is kerala..
The little one I think has roots in where she lives.. and forcing or making her will only confuse her more. .
I see my nephew and niece struggle with punjabi but english comes natutally to them.. and that how it should be.. if we have a problem then maybe we should go back and settle in india..

That is what I tell my sis.. introduce kids to all culture etc and let them descide.. yes tell them they need to learn the lanfuage in order to communicate with their cousins or relative back in india.. I am sure they will learn..

I can very well connect to you on more than 90% of your feelings bcoz me too sailing in the same boat. My son too doesn’t speak my mother tongue.

I and my husband both are gujjus and are out of Gujarat for more than 5 years now. I am in Mumbai for almost 4years now and being working professionals, my son spends some hours at the daycare where he converses in Hindi and English in school.

I face the same question from all my relatives and friends too… ”Doesn’t he speak Gujarati at all ????”

My son does understand it and off lately he has started speaking a few lines too..but neither me nor my hubby force him to do so… They have a tendency to pick up…earlier or later…

But honestly I feel, its good to be introduced to multiple cultures…bcoz me though born and brought up in Gujarat and a hardcore garba fan still dont follow all customs or traditions… We mithapurians always grow differently as we come from a cosmopolitan culture and our generally categorised as outcast / extrovert / independent thinkers. After few years kids gonna have their own ideologies and we can try putting good values in them for being a good individual and human being…

Normally I dont read your blogs, just the title, but this title did interest me to read what’s on your mind.

First, you are not the only one on this boat, the new day and age of globalisation is going to cause this dilemma for everyone who is from a land where the native language is different than english.

My little one speaks gujarati pretty well and clear,. But that was because she spent over year in India with the inlaws and my family. But I can see, she is slowly loosing touch and has developed this british accent thanks to Peppa Pig (papi pig for me) LOL

Having said that not all my colleagues here have had that opportunity, and I have seen them complaining that their Kid refuses to speak in their mother tongue.

My take (not necessarily my wife’s) on this is, culture and language are two different things. One can embrace a culture but because they can’t speak the language tied to that culture doesn’t necessarily make them someone who doesn’t follow that culture.

Surely, you would love your kid to speak all the languages that their parent can speak, but they should also be given the opportunity to do so and also, a need needs to be created so they can see the value.

I suck at writing gujarati and now even reading it, although I’m a gujju. But my spoken is still native and no one can tell that i have been living in aussie land for 15 years. But we could read/write/speak so many languages because we had the chance to do so and the need to pass the subjects 🙂

I personally don’t care what my daughter ends up speaking or eating. what i really care is, she has values that really matter, such as being a good human being, being respectful to elders, among others.
And ofcourse be the best and no.1 at anything i make her do (just kidding)

And who cares what others think or say. Especially stranger. Next time you see that lady, tell her that Mimi speaks mandarin, french, spanish and italian. And from next year she is starting Indian languages.

Much depends on what happens later on. I had the same dilemma – from the north married to a Tamilian. Our children only had English. Then we went to Canada, and at least one of them is comfortable in French. Exposure is the way to do it. A friend from Maharashtra, married to a Keralite, has a daughter who is comfortable but not particularly fluent in 4 languages, if you throw Hindi into the mix. She will,I think eventually, manage in all and be good in at least one.
So the best suggestion is to ignore her ignoring you and barrel along anyway in your mother tongue at home. She’ll get the message eventually.

Anu Dear,
I have always believed that a language should be effective, no matter what tongue you speak in. A sharp tongue can mar the sweetest of languages. Saint Kabir said “Aisi vani boliye, mann ka aapa khoye, auran ko sheetal karey, aap hu sheetal hoye” , so we really shouldn’t care what language our kids speak, as long as it makes them polite and charming besides endearing them to all.

I am there with you. My older one doesn’t speak our mother tongue “Telugu”.
To add to it, my husband is a telugu guy who spent most of his life in Chennai. But I am not sure you should be worried. I would like my children to appreciate our culture, but I don’t want to force them. For me its more important that they fit into the “American Culture” (which I cannot teach, because I don’t know much about it.), because that is the culture they grow up in. And like you that is the culture they will carry with them for the rest of their lives and that is what they have to use in all their interactions.

I am actually sad that I cannot add a lot of value to their lives in this aspect.
Our parents did play a huge role in this aspect of our lives.
To me I wouldn’t want to complicate their lives more than they already are.

That is my take on this. And I don’t really worry that he cant speak our mother tongue.

Very well written. You raise some deep questions that gain more importance as the world grows smaller. I somehow don’t find it easy to “leave it to time” . Feel like doing something, but unclear as to what. Uh.. well.. maybe time will bring clarity.. 🙂

You kind of mixed two things. I am a tamilian born and raised in the North, married to a Telugu and settled in Hyderabad now. My daughter speaks 4 languages fluently, but yes it wasn’t easy. I made a conscious effort to speak to her in Tamil, and then introduced her to English and Hindi. Though my husband is Telugu, she never spoke the language until I began to converse in it myself. I had to own the language before imparting to her the essence of conversing in the language. Nevertheless, mother tongue is a very sensitive topic. It is one thing to expose a child to a culture and another to help pick up a language. Language is a medium for communication and expression. Children learn languages very quickly, provided the exposure is there. It helps their brain respond better to change and anything new always manages to attract attention. It is never too late to introduce another language especially the mother tongue. But yes again, it will not happen unless parents make a conscious effort towards it.